Dry Cut Saw Stand

[CharleyL]

No welding involved, but welding tools related and I thought you might be interested.

Attached are photos of a stand that we adapted for use with our Milwaukee dry cut saw, and it has worked out very well for us. These saws are great for making smooth fast cuts in metal, but there never seems to be a good way to carry them or set them up for easy and efficient use. On a bench you need additional supports to hold the stock above the surface of the bench so it is level with the bed of the saw. When doing miter cuts, either the saw has to be turned on the bench or the stock has to be supported by something other than the bench. The alternative is to place the saw on the ground and do all of your cutting there, but you still need to support the stock so that it's level with the saw bed, and kneeling on the ground to make the cuts is getting nearly impossible for this old abused body of mine. Transporting the saw by the top handle any significant distance is difficult too.

To solve these issues we mounted our Milwaukee saw on a Delta Miter Saw / Planer Stand, but with a bit of a twist. We added a Lazy Susan bearing. Woodworking miter saws can be attached solidly to these stands because the saw itself can be turned right or left up to 45 degrees to make miter cuts, but we don't have this option with the dry cut saws. To solve this we mounted our saw on a 12" Lazy Susan bearing. This allows the whole saw to be easily rotated to make the miter cuts or turned a full 90 deg for the narrowest profile possible for storage. The top of the purchased stand was covered with 3/32 aluminum diamond plate (because we had it). You could use almost anything here but the diamond plate looks great. The Lazy Susan bearing was attached to the center of the diamond plate, and a 5/16 aluminum plate large enough to hold the saw was attached to the Lazy Susan (1/4" would be more than thick enough) with the saw then attached to it. The bearing was placed upside down (wide outer flange hanging down) to minimize the chances of metal cuttings getting into the bearing area, and so far this seems to be working.

The aluminum that we used were drops from previous projects, so the only items purchased were the stand and the Lazy Susan bearing. The saw is now easily moved like a hand truck and quickly lifted and locked in the working position. It's easy to use it to make straight or miter cuts as the saw itself can be rotated without the to move the stock. The stand has adjustable in-feed and out-feed rollers included that slide almost 3' out and up to the saw's base height to support the stock (about 100 lb limit on these), and the stand with the saw attached can be quickly collapsed, moved, and stored when the project is complete. When it's in the upright hand truck position it only requires about 2 sq ft of floor space, so it fits almost anywhere.

Charley

[Bert]

Charley:
OUTSTANDING!!!!!!!!!!
AWSOME!!!!!!!!!!
WAY TO GO!!!!!!!!!!
WHOOO HOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for sharing and good pics!!! (could have been bigger)
Where did you buy the lazy suzie bearing from???

[jimmy_pop]

that's really cool. until i can buy a Dake or Scotchman dry saw, im going to break down and build a new base for my Milwaukee 6190. Great saw but the base and clamp suck.

I'm planning to have my laser cut vendor build a new base out of some 3/8 cold rolled and employ a rotating clamp for 45* left and right cuts. My only hang up so far us trying to figure out the relationship between the bolts of the arm of the saw and the blade ... where 0 zero is. Everything has to start out with a perfectly square 90* cut.

I'll be sharing my plans for building a commercial grade base for the 6190.

joel

[CharleyL]

I bought the Lazy Susan bearing from Klingspor's Woodworking in Hickory, NC but they are readily available through most woodworking and kitchen cabinet parts suppliers (maybe even Lowes or Home Depot but I didn't check there). Look in the drawer slide area. It should cost about $10. Buy the 12" size because it's needed to support the heavy saw.

The Delta stand that I used is the heaviest model of this style that seems to be available. I bought it from Amazon for about $190. Porter Cable makes a similar stand that is available from Lowes, but it isn't anywhere near as strong or with all of the options that the Delta has. It has skids instead of in and out feed rollers, has no t-tracks for attaching the top, and is built a bit lighter. I chose the Delta because I already had one that holds a DeWalt 735 woodworking planer that weighs almost 60 lbs and it has performed very well for over a year, and I knew it could handle the weight of the Milwaukee saw.

The top of the stand has 4 T-slots made into it with adjustable plates to allow attaching different size woodworking saws. We removed these plates, but saved the T nuts and the flat head bolts, re-using them to attach the diamond plate to the T-slots. The biggest problem that you will run into is how to bolt the bearing down into the diamond plate and up into the plate that holds the saw. There is a large access hole in the bearing to allow you to put the bolts up into the saw plate, but you have to drill a matching hole down through the diamond plate so these bolts that go up from the bearing into the saw plate can be installed. You put one in, turn the saw 90 deg, put another one in, and repeat until all 4 are in. Before you bolt everything together, remember to drill and install the bolts to hold the saw on the top plate. You might even have to put the bolts in these holes before you bolt the top plate to the bearing as some saw bases might be smaller than the Milwaukee. The base of our Milwaukee saw is longer than the Delta stand is wide, so it was easy to just turn the saw to 45 deg so these bolt locations extend out over the edge of the stand, making the attachment of the saw very easy (bolts go up from below with the nuts on top).

Jimmy_pop,

You may want to re-think your plan on making a new base for your saw. When cutting metal you need it to be locked tightly in a vice. It's not like cutting wood on a mitre saw. The Milwaukee vice will only accept angles between 45 and 90 degrees and in only one direction. So making a new saw base without coming up with a different vice won't buy you much.

I'll take and post more pictures if anyone needs more detail, but I won't take it apart for them, as it's seeing almost daily use right now.

Charley

[Larwyn]

Good choice. I have had my 12" DeWalt miter saw on that same model Delta stand for a few years now. It is the best portable stand I have ever used for job site work and good enough even in the woodworking shop. It's easy enough for one person to load and unload from the truck with the saw still attached. On the job site the saw and stand become a convenient workbench and wood vise when not being utilized for cutting.

[Bert]

Charley,
Thank you SO much!!!!!!!!!!! Great info, and great looking chop saw stand/idea......................
much appreciative!!!!!!!!!!!
bert

[Kamikaze]

I've got the same Delta stand and I have used it for my chop saw and miter saw as well! It was my only choice due to the portability and the small area it stores into! I just wish I could figure out a way to make it a quick release table top for changing the saws easier and quicker! Reading through your posts, it seems as though it may be easier to use the diamond plate base, (or similar metal), to just lock it into the rails with the carriage bolts. \

If you could snap a couple more pics of the attachment details and how your lock the saw into position, it would be greatly appreaciated!

Thanks for sharing!

[CharleyL]

Kamikaze,

It wouldn't be very hard to make more than one diamond plate and mount different tools on each. You could then just unbolt one and switch it with another. Only 8 bolts need to be loosened/tightened to make the change and each tool change would probably take about 10 minutes. The same set of T nits and bolts could even be used. Diamond plate isn't even necessary. We used it because we had it, but keep your choice as light as reasonably possible while realizing that you have to countersink 8 flathead bolts in it.

Here is a detailed description of the assembly as we did it. To attach the diamond plate to the stand there are four T slots running lengthwise on the top of the stand that are spaced about equally from front to back. The stand comes with flat plates with mounting slots in them for mounting a woodworking saw or planer. These plates are attached with flat head bolts with T (square) nuts holding them to the T slots. We removed these plates, nuts, and bolts and then cut the diamond plate to the width of the stand and to the length of the T slots. We then drilled and countersunk 8 holes in the diamond plate directly over these T slot locations. We then inserted one of the flathead bolts in each drilled hole on the left end of the diamond plate, placed a T nut loosely on each of these bolts, placed the diamond plate on the stand and slid it far enough to the left to engage the T nuts into the ends of the T slots. We then slid the diamond plate to the right so that the holes in the other end of the diamond plate were past the ends of the T slots on that end of the stand and then installed the flat head bolts and T nuts loosely on that end. We then slid the diamond plate back to center, while engaging each T nut in it's corresponding T slot. When We got the diamond plate centered on the stand We tightened all of the flat head bolts. This is the easy part.

Planning and proceeding with the drilling of the holes to mount the Lazy Susan bearing is a bit more difficult because you need to bolt it to the center of the diamond plate (easy part) and then you need to bolt the bearing to the plate that will support the saw above the bearing. BTW, it's best to put the large side of the bearing on top to minimize the chance of getting cuttings in the bearing race and jamming the rotation. When you get the bearing in your hands you will understand what I'm talking about. Bolts need to go up through the top half of the bearing and into the saw support plate from below. The only way to do this is to drill a clearance hole in the diamond plate so you can reach up through it with a bolt in a socket wrench, rotate the bearing until a hole in it lines up with this bolt, and then position the saw plate so the threaded hole that you drilled in it lines up with the end of the bolt. You can then install this bolt, but not tighten it yet. You then rotate the saw plate and bearing 90 deg and repeat the process, and then again two more times until you get all four bolts installed. By the way, these bolts will need very thin heads as they will be in between the upper and lower halves of the bearing, and will bind when you rotate the bearing if they are too large.

We didn't put any lock on the saw to prevent it from rotating. We were planning to do this, but found that it wasn't necessary. With everything centered during assembly, the saw is balanced very well and it doesn't rotate from wherever it was when you tip the stand up into the vertical position (we turn it 90 deg to prevent it from overhanging the sides of the stand during transport). When using the saw it also pretty much stays where you put it. The vice will position it to match your stock position wherever the stock is as you tighten it and I think it works out better if the saw isn't locked in a fixed position. Of course, you can add a lock to your's if you want to. We were planning to drill a hole in the saw plate and then holes at common angles in the diamond plate to drop a pin down through, but we canned the idea.

No pictures today, but will try to post some close-ups of the diamond plate mounting sometime tomorrow.

Charley

[CharleyL]

I'm pleased that you all think this project was a good idea.

I thought about it for quite a while before we put it together and so far, it's working great for us. It even goes into the truck easily. Just back it up to the truck in the upright position, reach down and pick up the wheeled end by the piece that the stand sits on when in a hand truck position, and lift, tilt, and slide the handle end into the truck. It comes back out just as easy.

Charley

[CharleyL]

Here are a few more pictures for Kamikaze.

I loosened the flat head screws that hold the diamond plate in place and slid the diamond plate to the left so the T slots are visible. The top is held down to these with flat heat bolts and T nuts (flat square plates with a threaded hole in the center). The T nuts fit inside these T slot channels.
The last picture shows some of the hardware that was removed from the top of the stand before installing the diamond plate. On the left is one of the four original saw mounting plates. In the center is a T nut and a bolt and on the right is one of two hooks that were included to allow winding of a power cord. They originally had one fastened at each end of the T slot in the rear T track. We decided not to use them.